When All is Said and Done
by OreoSparrow
Summary: The adventure is over. Turbo's gone, Sugar Rush is saved, and it's happily ever after for everyone. Life goes on, after all...but when Litwak decides it's time to bring in an Xbox, what will happen when our favorite characters stumble upon the Internet? Might contain hints of Vanilla Butter, cuz I'm me, and of course Hero's Cuties.
1. Chapter 1

For a long time, Litwak's arcade had been a favorite of the local youngsters. Sure, every now and then, an old game might break down, but with the exception of the fiasco with TurboTime and Roadblasters back in the eighties, the arcade had run smoothly, something Litwak prided himself on, being a longtime lover of arcade games.  
Then came the whole mess with Fix-It Felix, Jr. No matter how many times Litwak brought it up with the repairman or searched the Web for possible game viruses, he could find nothing that explained how a game might go berserk and then fix itself without being unplugged or restarted. Nothing like this had ever happened before.  
And then Sugar Rush changing itself on the same night! When he checked the video cameras on Wednesday morning, erratic bursts of light had been shown coming from the Sugar Rush screen. When he hurried to check the game, it was fine, but a new character had suddenly appeared, a girl named Vanellope Von Schweetz. At least this Mr. Litwak had an explanation for-the way he figured, one of the young players must have unlocked a well-hidden Easter egg and been rewarded with the new character.  
It could have happened. The theory made sense. And it certainly explained why Vanellope's artwork was on the side of the Sugar Rush game cabinet. But despite the reasonable explanation, there were a few things that bothered Mr. Litwak. Why wasn't King Candy a playable character anymore? New characters were sometimes unlocked in the games at the arcade, but none of them ever just vanished. Why was the new character's teleporting power accompanied by a burst of binary code? And why would Sugar Rush act up on the same day as Fix-It Felix, Jr.?  
Two malfunctioned-then-fixed games, one cracked cabinet screen over at Dig-Dug, and the new game scheduled to arrive today. Add them all up, and it amounted to one big headache for Mr. Litwak. So it didn't help to see a boy's hand shoot up from where he stood playing Fix-It Felix, Jr., a beacon in a sea of children and game cabinets.  
"What seems to be the problem, little fella?" the owner asked, approaching the cabinet.  
"The wrecking guy is missing," complained the boy, gesturing to the screen. Litwak adjusted his glasses and leaned in to see that Fix It-Felix, Jr. Was standing beside the little building, holding his hammer above his head, Nicelander tenants were peering anxiously out of the windows, crying, "Fix it, Felix!" but just as the boy had said, Ralph, who should have been destroying the building, was nowhere to be seen.  
"Stefanie says it happened to her last week," said the boy. "D'you think it's busted?"  
"It might be," Litwak replied. "Can't tell why, though. Hang tight, son. I'll be right back with an out-of-order sign."

"Did he just say out-of-order?" squeaked Deanna from her window. "That's it! We're doomed!"  
Felix thought quickly. "Calm down!" he hissed out of the corner of his mouth. "After the sign's up, I'll check on Tapper's. Ralph might be there."  
"Ralph!" Gene could be heard grumbling. "If it weren't for that lazy goof, we wouldn't be getting put out-of-order twice in one week!"  
"Oh, shut up, Gene!" Mary argued. "If it weren't for you, we wouldn't have been put out-of-order the first time!"  
Gene didn't have an answer for that, opting to slam his window shut instead.  
Before Felix could tell them to stop bickering, the train bell sounded from the little train station offscreen. The handyman was overjoyed to see the familiar shape of Ralph squeezed into the last car.  
"Ralph!" he called as loudly as he dared. "Quarter alert!"

Litwak returned after a minute, orange paper in hand. As the boy stood aside, he leaned in to paste it to the screen...and stopped.  
"What's going on?" asked the boy, leaning in to see.  
As they looked on, Ralph came running onscreen at full tilt. He rested for a second with his enormous hands on his knees, then straightened up, raised his fists in the air, and shouted, "I'm gonna wreck it!"  
"What's going on?" asked the boy as Ralph scaled the building, smashing windows. He looked up at the dumbfounded Litwak as though expecting an explanation.  
"The owner stared at the screen. "I have no idea," he admitted after several seconds. "Sure glad it's working, though." As the boy shrugged and started playing without complaint, Litwak slowly walked back to his desk and plopped down in his swivel chair, completely at a loss for words as to what had just happened for the _second_ time in a week.  
— _Earlier that day_  
The bright sunlight shining in through the window was what woke Ralph. The wrecker stretched and sat up before realizing he wasn't lying on hard dirt and covered in bricks like usual.  
Noticing the candy-cane stripes in green and pink on the walls, he realized he was in Vanellope's room, lying across her enormous bed. It was rather nice to be lying on a soft spongecake mattress instead of the hard ground back at the dump, and for a moment he lay back down and just stared at the ceiling.  
Then he heard a small rustling noise, and Vanellope poked her head out sleepily from the mound of covers beside him.  
"Wuzzgoinon?" she murmured, half-asleep. "Shouldn't 'cha be back in yer own game, Stinkbrain?"  
Ralph's eyes widened in an oh-crap moment. "What?" he yelped, grabbing the tiny alarm clock off of Vanellope's dresser. Sure enough, it read eight-thirty A.M.  
"I've gotta go! See ya later, kid!" As Vanellope curled up on her pillow, the wrecker jumped out of the bed and ran out of the room.  
In the castle hall, Sour Bill stood on a ladder, spraying the candy windows and wiping them with a cloth. As Ralph went by, running as fast as he could, the ladder teetered and tipped, the small green sourball having just enough time to grab the windowsill, dropping the cloth in the process.  
As Bill dangled from the sill, eyes wide, he looked around slowly, then raised the spray bottle and spritzed the window again.

"Well, I sure am glad you made it in time, Ralph," Felix chirped as the wrecker relayed the story to him. The last player of the day, a curly-haired girl, had just finished her game, and Gene had wasted no time calling out a smart remark about Ralph's work ethic as Felix came out to chat.  
"Just think," the handyman continued, "out-of-order twice in one week? I don't think that's ever happened before. And oh, did you see the look on Litwak's face?"  
Ralph had to smile. "Yeah, I did."  
Felix laughed heartily. "I think you really threw him for a loop there, Ralph!" He lightly punched Ralph in the shoulder-or the side, since that was as high as he could reach. "You up for a visit to Tapper's, brother?"  
Ralph marveled at the change. A week ago, Felix wouldn't have exchanged greetings with his antagonist, and now here they were chatting like old friends. It had been a stroke of luck whenhe stopped at Tapper's long enough to meet Markowski.  
"I'd love to Felix, but I've got a Bad-Anon meeting over in Pac-Man," he reminded the handyman. "Catch you later, Fix-It."  
"See ya, Ralph!" Felix replied, waving as he headed over to the Niceland apartment, and the wrecker headed over to the train platform, jumping into the small blue train, which immediately sped off into the cord tunnel.


	2. Chapter 2

As Ralph jumped out of the little blue train and left the tunnel entrance saying Fix It Felix, Jr., he couldn't help but notice the whispers that echoed across the station.

Before the "Sugar Rush incident", as many of GCS's characters had dubbed it, any sighting of Ralph would have prompted screams and scowls from the others, but now he was known as something of a hero. Of course, this was due largely in part to the Sugar Rush racers, who, let loose in the station for the first time, had wasted not a second spreading the story as far and wide as they possibly could, and embellishing it wherever it seemed boring. Ralph had been asked if it was true that he'd taken down a hundred cybugs at once, or whether he'd really beaten a cybug-monster hybrid with his bare fists.

Thankfully the questions had stopped after a few days, but he had to admit, it was nice to walk through the station and have nobody scream, run, or point out your lack of personal hygiene.

The train for Pac-Man was already almost full, save for one spot next to Zangief, who waved as soon as he spotted the fellow bad guy. "Hey, Ralph!" he shouted. "Good to see you here!"

"Hey, Zangief." Ralph sat down in the empty spot.

"So, how is new arcade hero?" asked the Russian fighter as they zoomed down the tunnel.

"Oh, you heard about that?" Ralph replied with a somewhat sheepish grin.

"Heard of? Ralph, all of arcade knows story by now! How Wreck-It Ralph saved Sugar Rush from robot bugs! You are biggest news since Turbo, my friend," Zangief said warmly, clapping a hand onto Ralph's shoulder. "You know, is good for bad guys, too. Bowser tells me that yesterday Mario said hello and waved in station! People begin to realize that perhaps we are not so bad after all."

The train pulled into Pac-Man with an electronic beep.

"Really? That's great," Ralph said sincerely as they trooped into the game.

Clyde was, as usual, waiting in the small central room that also served as Bad-Anon's meeting area.

"Welcome back, everyone!" he greeted enthusiastically as the bad guys took their respective seats. "It's great to see you all here. Now as many of you know, one of our group recently became something of a celebrity in the arcade. Ralph, congratulations."

Murmured agreements from the other villains.

"Now as you know, this is a major breakthrough for the Bad-Anon program. Game characters are beginning to respect their bad guys!" Clyde's pattern became increasingly erratic in his excitement. "Bowser, Dr. Eggman, and Zangief have held friendly conversations with their protagonists, something that normally might not have happened for months. This morning, Pac-Man asked me how I'd been doing lately!"

"Hey, calm down there, Clyde," interjected Bowser, looking alarmed. Immediately, Clyde's pattern slowed down to a normal speed.

"Sorry," apologized the orange ghost. "I got carried away for a moment there." He took a deep breath before continuing. "The point is, I'm very proud of you all."

Once again, murmured thanks rippled around the circle.

Clyde beamed at them. "Now, moving on, I have some exciting news for you. Last night, Pinky and Blinky reported seeing a new game being plugged in over by BurgerTime. We don't know what the new game is called or what it's about, but once it's open for intergame travel, we'll need to stop by and invite any new bad guys to our group, and as our newest member, Ralph, I was hoping you could do that."

All eyes turned to the wrecker, who shifted uncomfortably in his little seat. "Sure, I guess so," he replied, to which Clyde beamed again. "Great! Now let's close our meeting with the Bad Guy Affirmation."

As everyone stood and joined hands, something caught Ralph's eye. Out of the corner of the Pac-Man screen, he saw the corner of a game next to BurgerTime. Could it be the new game? He stood on his toes in an effort to read the game's title, but he could see only the corner, which was black and strangely shiny.

Then everyone began moving out the door, and Ralph dropped back onto his heels.

"See you next week, everyone!" Clyde called after them as they moved down the hallway as a group and piled into the train.

With a quick goodbye to Zangief, Ralph hurried across the station and entered Fix-It Felix, Jr.

Surprisingly, he hadn't been stopped by the Surge Protector in four days. Perhaps the official had found some respect for him, or maybe it was because he'd actually bowled the man over in his excitement to visit Vanellope the first day after she'd become president. Yes, Ralph thought, it was definitely the latter.

When the little blue train stopped, he jumped out. Instead of heading back to his fixed-up house, he turned left towards the iconic Nicelander apartment building and began climbing. The Pac-Man screen tilted backwards and was too low to the ground to see much of anything, but the roof of the Fix-It Felix building might be the perfect height to view the new game.

Ralph stepped up to the edge of the roof.

He stood on tiptoe.

And then he realized what the shiny black game was.

It was a TV, the biggest one Ralph had ever seen. It reminded him of the jumbo screen at the Royal Raceway, over in Sugar Rush. Mounted to the wall, and with a smaller black box next to it, Litwak knelt beside it as Ralph watched, and began fiddling with wires.

"Definitely not an arcade game," Ralph muttered.

Vanellope jumped onto the Sugar Rush train, which had just been installed but already seemed to be working fine, and watched the station shrink out of sight as the train zoomed down the cord tunnel.

Her kart was waiting for her inside the entrance to Sugar Rush, and she jumped in. It looked like that night's Random Roster Race was finished, and the next day's players would be disappointed not to find Vanellope on the list. But even presidents had to have days off, which she'd discovered last week.

As the kart roared to life, Adorabeezle Winterpop came running out of the Sugar Rush entrance after her, eyes bright and cheeks flushed. She was the biggest gossip out of all of them, and could always be counted on to talk your ear off about people you'd never met and didn't care about.

"Hey, icepop," Vanellope greeted her, not looking up.

"Vanellope!" Adorabeezle shouted back. "Hey, Vanellope, you'll never guess what I heard!"

The president slipped easily into snarker mode. "Adorabeezle, everyone already knows Rancis sleeps with a mirror," she replied, adjusting her steering wheel. "Old news."

The jibe easily passed over Adorabeezle's head. She jumped into her own kart, parked next to Vanellope's.

"There's a TV in the arcade!" she burst out, evidently unable to keep it in any longer. "Litwak plugged it in last night, and they're turning it on in the morning!"

Vanellope's attitude changed from polite boredness to sudden interest. "Really! Oh, cool! I'll have to check it out with Stinkbrain sometime!"

Adorabeezle's expression didn't seem to know whether it was a smile or a scowl. "That smelly guy with the huge hands? I know he saved us and all, but why do you hang out with him so much? He kind of scares me."

Vanellope's expression definitely knew it was a scowl. Without a word, she pushed down hard on the gas pedal and zoomed down towards the palace, leaving a confused-looking Adorabeezle in the dust.


End file.
